During a closed-door meeting of House Democrats Wednesday, Pelosi defended her no-negotiating strategy.
“Understand, there is a plan. It is working for us,” Pelosi told the caucus, recounting how she and other Democrats beat back then-President George W. Bush’s efforts to privatize social security in 2005 by staying unified and sticking to a simple message, much like they were doing now. Democrats did the same when Republicans shutdown the government in 2013 in a bid to defund Obamacare, she said. They didn’t counter Republicans then, Pelosi noted —and ultimately, they won.
“So, for week-in and week-out, we had to say to our group, ‘Stick with the plan,'” Pelosi said, according to a source in the room. “And so, what we are saying is, ‘Open up government. And then we can discuss.'”
“She said the best thing to do is stand your ground and not to propose our own solution,” said one Democratic aide familiar with Pelosi’s message. “She was saying, ‘You have to let them screw the pooch on this to look good,’ that it would weaken us to offer a solution.”
Beyond that, Pelosi did one major thing Trump couldn’t: she kept the divisions in her caucus private. As an unpredictable loose cannon who changed his position on what he wanted from day to day, Trump was unable to keep Republicans unified behind his border wall demand—one they never fully embraced to begin with
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